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Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold
After Ross Benes left Nebraska for New York, he witnessed his polite home state become synonymous with “Trump country.” Long dismissed as “flyover” land, the area where he was born and raised suddenly became the subject of TV features and frequent opinion columns. With the rural-urban divide overtaking the national conversation, Benes knew what he had to go home.In Rural Rebellion, Benes explores Nebraska’s shifting political landscape to better understand what’s plaguing America. He clarifies how Nebraska defies red-state stereotypes while offering readers insights into how a frontier state with a tradition of nonpartisanship succumbed to the hardened right. Extensive interviews with US senators, representatives, governors, state lawmakers, and other power brokers illustrate how local disputes over health-care coverage and education funding became microcosms for our current national crisis.Rural Rebellion is also the story of one man coming to terms with both his past and present. Benes writes about the dissonance of moving from the most rural and conservative region of the country to its most liberal and urban centers as they grow further apart at a critical moment in history. He seeks to bridge America’s current political divides by contrasting the conservative values he learned growing up in a town of three hundred with those of his liberal acquaintances in New York City, where he now lives.At a time when social and political differences are too often portrayed in stark binary terms, and people in the Trump-supporting heartland are depicted in reductive, one-dimensional ways, Benes tells real-life stories to add depth and nuance to our understanding of rural Americans’ attitudes about abortion, immigration, big government, and other contentious issues. His argument and conclusion are simple but that Americans in disparate places would be less hostile to one another if they just knew each other a little better. Part memoir, journalism, and social science, Rural Rebellion is a book for our times.
- GenresNonfiction
321 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 2, 2021
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March 2, 2021
TL;DR
Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes is part memoir, part contemporary history, part political analysis. It blends these aspects together effortlessly to document Nebraska’s rightward trend. Highly recommended for political junkies, and a must read for the Democratic National Committee.
Disclaimer: The author provided me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions that follow are mine and mine alone.
For more reviews, please, visit my blog at Primmlife.com
Review: Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes
All politics are local in the U.S. But since the 1980s, the local state political scene has trended towards mimicking national politics. States, like their citizens, are becoming more divided, which means internally the states are under single party control. The reasons for the political divide are multiple and varied. While gerrymandering and voter suppression play their parts, they’re not the whole reason. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) too often uses excuses to avoid doing the work in so-called red states. As Stacey Abrams demonstrated in Georgia, there are no red states; there are just states the DNC has given up on. But even that is too simplistic an explanation. Ross Benes demonstrates this by looking to the state of Nebraska where he grew up and went to college. In Rural Rebellion, Benes analyzes how his home state turned itself into a Republican stronghold.
Rural Rebellion is a short book, but it’s packed with good analysis. Benes uses his own life and experience in Nebraska to explain and relate the larger trends in the state. Benes structured the book around religion becoming political, immigration, corruption, the partisan trend in the non-partisan legislature, the crusade against higher education, and the Democratic infighting in the state. Each topic gets a bit from Benes life, a bit from interviews, and some diving into data. Interestingly, the book starts with the local memory of when the actors from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar came to town. The contrast of conservative people reminiscing about drag queens sets the tone for the book. Benes isn’t going to deal in stereotypes. Nor is he going to provide simple reasons for the causes of the rightward trend. Benes shows how this trend, though, has made the state’s politicians more closely resemble their national parties. In particular, Ross’s discussion of the non-partisan state legislature is fascinating. In it, he shows how Republicans have changed the legislature to make it more partisan and less independent from the governor. This chapter alone is reason enough to get money out of politics.
Since Benes grew up in Nebraska, his roots are in conservatism, but as with many who leave home, that conservatism morphed into a centrism. This gives him an even keeled look at his home state. Benes tries to deal with the humans underneath the ideology and mostly succeeds. This is not a book for people who want a reason to blame the voters of Nebraska for their own troubles. It’s not as simple as that. But, for anyone who reads this, they will get a good account of the reality of conservatives.
Exposure Is Needed
A recurring theme throughout Rural Rebellion is that liberals have a stereotypical view of conservatives and vice versa. These views come from the fact that the U.S. is self-separating into bubbles of like-minded thought and ideology. This is true in life, in media consumption, and online. Benes talks about how his exposure to new places and new ways of thinking is what broke him out of the conservative mold in which he grew up. But Benes correctly notes that this is often a one way road. People from the big city do not visit small towns to understand their lives. At most, liberals read accounts of the NY Times sending its reporters to the heartland and then boycott the NY Times for not demonizing the people.
One of the great examples that Benes uses is how kids all over the U.S. are taught that going to the big city is an educational trip. While this is true and important for a child’s education, the reverse never happens. Kids that live in cities with monuments never travel to the countryside to learn about farming or small town life. Maybe there should be field trips for city schools to go to the countryside and see a different way of life.
The reality of this country is that we stigmatize people not like us. This is as true for Democrats as it is for Republicans. With the fracturing of our media and the increased isolation social media incentivizes, the divide will only worsen. The rhetoric on both sides of the aisle is increasingly divisive, and the extremely online voters drive the rhetoric to new extremes. The U.S. needs an adopt-an-opposing-voter policy where a Democrat and a Republican have a conversation about anything except politics to remember the humanity in each person.
Politics in the Pulpit
Like Benes, I grew up Catholic. I was anti-abortion because it was the only perspective that I knew. But as I moved around the world and got exposure to different ways of thinking, I became disillusioned with the Catholic church. In every city that I’ve lived in, I’ve tried to find a Catholic church, but in every city, I don’t go back. I like going to mass on Easter and Christmas because those are the only two masses that do not get politicized. I want to go to church to learn how to better myself spiritually, but the Catholic church in the U.S. has gotten out of the business of spiritual improvement. U.S. Catholics are obsessed with abortion, and, though, they claim to be ‘pro-life,’ they don’t spend as much time advocating to end the death penalty or to support and care for people who are actually alive. Some Catholics do live a pro-life life in which they support all aspects of life, but they are rare. In the U.S., only could a lifelong Catholic, who was a committed father, never divorced, goes to mass every Sunday, be considered less of a Christian than a man twice divorced, who cheated on every wife he’s had and who restarted the death penalty and only goes to church for photo opportunities. But that’s because abortion is an obsession for the U.S. Catholic church.
Benes describes the Catholics of Nebraska, but I wonder if he encountered any Qanon believers among the NE Catholics or if that’s a protestant phenomenon. Benes does not discuss Qanon in relation to religion and Republicans in Rural Rebellion. Whether that was a conscious choice or not, I applaud the decision. Benes wants to portray regular Nebraskans as taking on the Catholic church’s abortion obsession. Even people who wouldn’t believe the Qanon nonsense will swing hard right because of abortion. As Benes notes, the pulpit now is filled with phrases like “culture of death” that when repeated over and over, stick. This seems more like political propaganda than religious sermon.
Benes discusses this well in his chapter on religion, and even though he wasn’t trying to, he’s pushed me over the edge of believing that churches should lose their tax-exempt status. Or at the least, they should have to register as political organizations. If they want to preach political dogma from the pulpit, they should be treated as political organizations.
Immigration and Nebraska
The chapter on immigration makes the point that Republicans use immigration as a fear/anger tactic to drive their party to the polls. Republicans have turned immigration into the simple answer for all of America’s woes. Benes also notes that conservatives haven’t moved much on their opinion of immigration, but Democrats have dramatically changed their opinions. Included in this chapter is an example of how the town of Schuyler helped immigrants adjust. By working with them, the city was able to get the outcome it wanted without resorting to changing the laws. Helping others should be a conservative value, but it doesn’t seem to be.
This chapter is somewhat lacking. Benes suffers from the same problem as many journalists; he’s unwilling to call racism, racism. There is an added barrier for him in that calling people he grew up with racist is difficult and very, very hard to do. He acknowledges the anti-immigrant fervor in Nebraska, but he attributes this to politicians and media creating an echo chamber. This is true but only part of the story. Benes correctly notes that the people of Nebraska don’t consider themselves racist because of how they treat people. But racism isn’t just burning crosses in people’s yards. Institutional and structural racism exist, and Benes notes explicitly how politicians in Nebraska make laws specifically to make immigrant lives more difficult. He gets close when he notes that it’s not just illegal immigration that these people and their politicians oppose. He claims that most people don’t believe what the extremely online folk do, and this is only partly true. The silent ones may not believe some of the more extreme beliefs, but they often believe in the myth of color blindness and that racism only exists as way to bludgeon conservatives. For example Benes talks about calling the town next to them “a soccer town” or “Little Mexico,” but he doesn’t acknowledge the racism inherent these labels. The phrases separate and reinforce the foreign-ness of the brown-skinned kids. These labels are passed down through school athletics, and it’s a form of structural racism. Did Benes and his school chums call other towns “Little Germany” or “Little Poland?” He doesn’t say; so, maybe. But without indicating if referring to other towns as their countries of perceived origins, the reader has to assume this only applied to that town. Nicknames for town like this seem harmless to most conservatives, but they fail to recognize how the subtext of these nicknames is that they’re not like you, they’re not from here. And that division may not be noticed by the conservative conscious mind, but it’s still there nonetheless. And the kids from “Little Mexico” understand explicitly what is meant.
GOP versus Education
Rural Rebellion’s chapter on the Nebraska GOP’s war on higher education is excellent. He starts with a Turning Point USA protest that got blown out of proportion and then moves on to show how hard the GOP works to undermine higher education. (In Missouri, the Republican Party is working hard to undermine all education.) He points out that the TPUSA incident was small and between a handful of people. The majority of the student body and faculty didn’t participate and didn’t care till it blew up to national attention. Benes follows the incident through even after the national interest has moved on. He also points out that conservative obsession with higher education as indoctrination doesn’t fit with people’s lived experiences.
I loved this chapter. It’s valuable to point out that there is no easy solution either. Conservatives scrutinize higher education for any mistake and use that mistake to push for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. At a time when the world is becoming more technological and losing good manufacturing jobs, college educations are needed to prepare the workforce of tomorrow. But engineers, lawyers, and doctors do not make the whole entirety of an economy. The U.S. needs English majors, psychologists, historians, economists, and, yes, even diversity studies programs that conservatives love to make fun of. Without a degree, the chances of upward mobility decrease dramatically, and the trend is beginning to slow for those with degrees as well. If red states want to remain competitive, they’re going to need higher education.
There Are No Red States
The final chapter on the Democratic party of Nebraska in disarray is horrific. I, in 2018, registered for the first time as a Democrat. Reading how the party has failed that state was infuriating. In addition to the usual in-fighting one would expect of a political organization, Benes documents how the national Democratic Party wrote off the state. If the Democratic Party ignores voters, how can we blame them for siding with the party that reaches out to them? Benes demonstrates how out of sorts the Democratic Party is in the state. He notes that the national party under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took a more national approach. But if the Democratic Party wants to be the big tent party they claim, they have to fight for votes in Nebraska. Georgia flipping blue is proof of that. Texas has been growing bluer every year because of the investments Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden made there. Pair Rural Rebellion with Stacey Abrams work in Georgia to see that local organizers – local PARTIES – require support because their efforts pay off one hundred fold better than a top down national strategy. But with the condition that the national party left Nebraska’s Democratic Party, it will take investment and time by organizers in Nebraska to see results. But it will pay off.
Conclusion
Ross Benes’s Rural Rebellion tells the story of Nebraska’s shift ever rightward. It’s part documentary, part horror story for liberals. Benes gives conservatives and his neighbors a fair shake, and he admits that there’s no easy path to a blue Nebraska. The last chapter of the book shows that the Democratic Party isn’t really making an effort to take Nebraska voters seriously. It’s vital to the future of our democracy that the Democratic National Committee invest in red states. Don’t believe me? Just read the excellent Rural Rebellion to see the effects of writing off a state.
Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes is available from University Press of Kansas.
7.5 out of 10!
Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes is part memoir, part contemporary history, part political analysis. It blends these aspects together effortlessly to document Nebraska’s rightward trend. Highly recommended for political junkies, and a must read for the Democratic National Committee.
Disclaimer: The author provided me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions that follow are mine and mine alone.
For more reviews, please, visit my blog at Primmlife.com
Review: Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes
All politics are local in the U.S. But since the 1980s, the local state political scene has trended towards mimicking national politics. States, like their citizens, are becoming more divided, which means internally the states are under single party control. The reasons for the political divide are multiple and varied. While gerrymandering and voter suppression play their parts, they’re not the whole reason. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) too often uses excuses to avoid doing the work in so-called red states. As Stacey Abrams demonstrated in Georgia, there are no red states; there are just states the DNC has given up on. But even that is too simplistic an explanation. Ross Benes demonstrates this by looking to the state of Nebraska where he grew up and went to college. In Rural Rebellion, Benes analyzes how his home state turned itself into a Republican stronghold.
Rural Rebellion is a short book, but it’s packed with good analysis. Benes uses his own life and experience in Nebraska to explain and relate the larger trends in the state. Benes structured the book around religion becoming political, immigration, corruption, the partisan trend in the non-partisan legislature, the crusade against higher education, and the Democratic infighting in the state. Each topic gets a bit from Benes life, a bit from interviews, and some diving into data. Interestingly, the book starts with the local memory of when the actors from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar came to town. The contrast of conservative people reminiscing about drag queens sets the tone for the book. Benes isn’t going to deal in stereotypes. Nor is he going to provide simple reasons for the causes of the rightward trend. Benes shows how this trend, though, has made the state’s politicians more closely resemble their national parties. In particular, Ross’s discussion of the non-partisan state legislature is fascinating. In it, he shows how Republicans have changed the legislature to make it more partisan and less independent from the governor. This chapter alone is reason enough to get money out of politics.
Since Benes grew up in Nebraska, his roots are in conservatism, but as with many who leave home, that conservatism morphed into a centrism. This gives him an even keeled look at his home state. Benes tries to deal with the humans underneath the ideology and mostly succeeds. This is not a book for people who want a reason to blame the voters of Nebraska for their own troubles. It’s not as simple as that. But, for anyone who reads this, they will get a good account of the reality of conservatives.
Exposure Is Needed
A recurring theme throughout Rural Rebellion is that liberals have a stereotypical view of conservatives and vice versa. These views come from the fact that the U.S. is self-separating into bubbles of like-minded thought and ideology. This is true in life, in media consumption, and online. Benes talks about how his exposure to new places and new ways of thinking is what broke him out of the conservative mold in which he grew up. But Benes correctly notes that this is often a one way road. People from the big city do not visit small towns to understand their lives. At most, liberals read accounts of the NY Times sending its reporters to the heartland and then boycott the NY Times for not demonizing the people.
One of the great examples that Benes uses is how kids all over the U.S. are taught that going to the big city is an educational trip. While this is true and important for a child’s education, the reverse never happens. Kids that live in cities with monuments never travel to the countryside to learn about farming or small town life. Maybe there should be field trips for city schools to go to the countryside and see a different way of life.
The reality of this country is that we stigmatize people not like us. This is as true for Democrats as it is for Republicans. With the fracturing of our media and the increased isolation social media incentivizes, the divide will only worsen. The rhetoric on both sides of the aisle is increasingly divisive, and the extremely online voters drive the rhetoric to new extremes. The U.S. needs an adopt-an-opposing-voter policy where a Democrat and a Republican have a conversation about anything except politics to remember the humanity in each person.
Politics in the Pulpit
Like Benes, I grew up Catholic. I was anti-abortion because it was the only perspective that I knew. But as I moved around the world and got exposure to different ways of thinking, I became disillusioned with the Catholic church. In every city that I’ve lived in, I’ve tried to find a Catholic church, but in every city, I don’t go back. I like going to mass on Easter and Christmas because those are the only two masses that do not get politicized. I want to go to church to learn how to better myself spiritually, but the Catholic church in the U.S. has gotten out of the business of spiritual improvement. U.S. Catholics are obsessed with abortion, and, though, they claim to be ‘pro-life,’ they don’t spend as much time advocating to end the death penalty or to support and care for people who are actually alive. Some Catholics do live a pro-life life in which they support all aspects of life, but they are rare. In the U.S., only could a lifelong Catholic, who was a committed father, never divorced, goes to mass every Sunday, be considered less of a Christian than a man twice divorced, who cheated on every wife he’s had and who restarted the death penalty and only goes to church for photo opportunities. But that’s because abortion is an obsession for the U.S. Catholic church.
Benes describes the Catholics of Nebraska, but I wonder if he encountered any Qanon believers among the NE Catholics or if that’s a protestant phenomenon. Benes does not discuss Qanon in relation to religion and Republicans in Rural Rebellion. Whether that was a conscious choice or not, I applaud the decision. Benes wants to portray regular Nebraskans as taking on the Catholic church’s abortion obsession. Even people who wouldn’t believe the Qanon nonsense will swing hard right because of abortion. As Benes notes, the pulpit now is filled with phrases like “culture of death” that when repeated over and over, stick. This seems more like political propaganda than religious sermon.
Benes discusses this well in his chapter on religion, and even though he wasn’t trying to, he’s pushed me over the edge of believing that churches should lose their tax-exempt status. Or at the least, they should have to register as political organizations. If they want to preach political dogma from the pulpit, they should be treated as political organizations.
Immigration and Nebraska
The chapter on immigration makes the point that Republicans use immigration as a fear/anger tactic to drive their party to the polls. Republicans have turned immigration into the simple answer for all of America’s woes. Benes also notes that conservatives haven’t moved much on their opinion of immigration, but Democrats have dramatically changed their opinions. Included in this chapter is an example of how the town of Schuyler helped immigrants adjust. By working with them, the city was able to get the outcome it wanted without resorting to changing the laws. Helping others should be a conservative value, but it doesn’t seem to be.
This chapter is somewhat lacking. Benes suffers from the same problem as many journalists; he’s unwilling to call racism, racism. There is an added barrier for him in that calling people he grew up with racist is difficult and very, very hard to do. He acknowledges the anti-immigrant fervor in Nebraska, but he attributes this to politicians and media creating an echo chamber. This is true but only part of the story. Benes correctly notes that the people of Nebraska don’t consider themselves racist because of how they treat people. But racism isn’t just burning crosses in people’s yards. Institutional and structural racism exist, and Benes notes explicitly how politicians in Nebraska make laws specifically to make immigrant lives more difficult. He gets close when he notes that it’s not just illegal immigration that these people and their politicians oppose. He claims that most people don’t believe what the extremely online folk do, and this is only partly true. The silent ones may not believe some of the more extreme beliefs, but they often believe in the myth of color blindness and that racism only exists as way to bludgeon conservatives. For example Benes talks about calling the town next to them “a soccer town” or “Little Mexico,” but he doesn’t acknowledge the racism inherent these labels. The phrases separate and reinforce the foreign-ness of the brown-skinned kids. These labels are passed down through school athletics, and it’s a form of structural racism. Did Benes and his school chums call other towns “Little Germany” or “Little Poland?” He doesn’t say; so, maybe. But without indicating if referring to other towns as their countries of perceived origins, the reader has to assume this only applied to that town. Nicknames for town like this seem harmless to most conservatives, but they fail to recognize how the subtext of these nicknames is that they’re not like you, they’re not from here. And that division may not be noticed by the conservative conscious mind, but it’s still there nonetheless. And the kids from “Little Mexico” understand explicitly what is meant.
GOP versus Education
Rural Rebellion’s chapter on the Nebraska GOP’s war on higher education is excellent. He starts with a Turning Point USA protest that got blown out of proportion and then moves on to show how hard the GOP works to undermine higher education. (In Missouri, the Republican Party is working hard to undermine all education.) He points out that the TPUSA incident was small and between a handful of people. The majority of the student body and faculty didn’t participate and didn’t care till it blew up to national attention. Benes follows the incident through even after the national interest has moved on. He also points out that conservative obsession with higher education as indoctrination doesn’t fit with people’s lived experiences.
I loved this chapter. It’s valuable to point out that there is no easy solution either. Conservatives scrutinize higher education for any mistake and use that mistake to push for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. At a time when the world is becoming more technological and losing good manufacturing jobs, college educations are needed to prepare the workforce of tomorrow. But engineers, lawyers, and doctors do not make the whole entirety of an economy. The U.S. needs English majors, psychologists, historians, economists, and, yes, even diversity studies programs that conservatives love to make fun of. Without a degree, the chances of upward mobility decrease dramatically, and the trend is beginning to slow for those with degrees as well. If red states want to remain competitive, they’re going to need higher education.
There Are No Red States
The final chapter on the Democratic party of Nebraska in disarray is horrific. I, in 2018, registered for the first time as a Democrat. Reading how the party has failed that state was infuriating. In addition to the usual in-fighting one would expect of a political organization, Benes documents how the national Democratic Party wrote off the state. If the Democratic Party ignores voters, how can we blame them for siding with the party that reaches out to them? Benes demonstrates how out of sorts the Democratic Party is in the state. He notes that the national party under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took a more national approach. But if the Democratic Party wants to be the big tent party they claim, they have to fight for votes in Nebraska. Georgia flipping blue is proof of that. Texas has been growing bluer every year because of the investments Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden made there. Pair Rural Rebellion with Stacey Abrams work in Georgia to see that local organizers – local PARTIES – require support because their efforts pay off one hundred fold better than a top down national strategy. But with the condition that the national party left Nebraska’s Democratic Party, it will take investment and time by organizers in Nebraska to see results. But it will pay off.
Conclusion
Ross Benes’s Rural Rebellion tells the story of Nebraska’s shift ever rightward. It’s part documentary, part horror story for liberals. Benes gives conservatives and his neighbors a fair shake, and he admits that there’s no easy path to a blue Nebraska. The last chapter of the book shows that the Democratic Party isn’t really making an effort to take Nebraska voters seriously. It’s vital to the future of our democracy that the Democratic National Committee invest in red states. Don’t believe me? Just read the excellent Rural Rebellion to see the effects of writing off a state.
Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes is available from University Press of Kansas.
7.5 out of 10!
March 5, 2021
Like many East Coast liberals, I find it hard to understand why Midwesterners—particularly rural Midwesterners—continue to accept the former President's lies, resent and resist any government intrusion in their lives (while accepting farm subsidies), and hate government-mandated health care. Ross Benes has written an outstanding book, Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold, to help me understand.
Benes has written for many media outlets including The American Prospect, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, The Nation, New York, Rolling Stone, Slate, Vice, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s the author of Sex Weird-o-Pedia and The Sex Effect, which was described as “Freakonomics without pants.” He’s a lively writer, a diligent researcher, and is not afraid to include himself in the story when it helps the reader understand how he’s come to believe what he believes.
He spent his first 19 years in Brainard (pop. 420), a village in eastern Nebraska, and attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, which is about 40 miles to the southwest. He had a brief stint in Detroit, moved to New York City where he worked for Esquire magazine. He has stayed in New York, and his book traces how his political views “evolved as I’ve shifted from being a right-wing small-town Nebraskan to a card-carrying member of the East Coast ‘fake news’ media.” The book is about “the dissonance of moving from one of the most rural and conservative regions of America to one of its most liberal and urban centers as the two grow further apart at a critical moment in our country’s history.”
Start with abortion. “In Brainard,” says Benes, “we will support anything Republicans do as long as Republicans say that abortion is evil.” The right to life trumps all other issues: income inequality, basic health care, environmental degradation, immigration, and more. What’s more, the issue is non-negotiable. If you believe that a woman’s egg becomes a human being the moment a male sperm enters it the subject is closed and any talk of a woman’s right to control her body, or back-street abortions, or human misery is irrelevant.
So in Nebraska, Republicans support life while Democrats are baby killers. “Across Nebraska, billboards featuring Jesus and babies decorate cornfields that grow so tall that you can’t see past the country road intersection.” Nebraska school children look for ideas for pro-life poster they draw for school or their Catholic church. “They probably won’t realize that they’re advertising someone else’s politics. When you’re isolated in a depopulated area that consists almost entirely of people who look like you and share your beliefs, you don’t really question these things,” which is a theme that runs through the entire book.
As a result, state and local Nebraska political candidates must avoid any discussion of abortion, any hint that a woman has the right to decide whether to carry a fetus to term or not. As one state senator told Benes, “If you’re talking about abortion, you’re losing.” And be careful about the way you talk about immigration while you’re at it.
Nebraska actually has a record of accepting record number of refugees. Nevertheless, Benes writes that “city councils push ordinances aimed at making life unlivable for illegals despite their economic dependence on migrant labor. State legislators try to take away government funds for immigrants’ prenatal care even though these lawmakers ostensibly oppose abortion.”
Growing up in Brainard, Benes says he drank the Kool-Aid (invented in Nebraska): he wanted fewer illegal immigrants in the country; he wanted them deported; he wanted stricter border patrol. “Our safety depended on it. We law-abiding citizens didn’t deserve to be exposed to those who don’t respect the law.” With immigration, however, there may be room for negotiation.
He interviewed the mayor of Schuyler, a town that changed considerably when Cargill expended its beef plant and used migrant laborers to fill low-paying jobs, jobs Cornhuskers did not want to take at the wages offered. “Now Schuyler has the demographics benefitting an international municipality.” Immigrant businesses like The African Store, Chichihualo Supermarket, Novedades La Sorpresa clothing store, and Paleteria Oasis ice-cream stand help keep the town alive. “I’ve been to a lot of withering towns in Nebraska that would kill to have as many operating businesses as Schuyler has.”
Of course, there have been growing pains. A local man Benes talks with is unhappy that the golf club is the only place in town these days that serves a decent meal. While “an international ag corporation decided to expand its beef operations, now there is nowhere in town to regularly get a good steak because of it.” Blame the immigrants.
Then there’s health care. When you are used to “doing whatever you damn-well please on your own property, forcing people to participate in a massive health-care marketplace feels restrictive of personal liberty.” People in Brainard generally embrace principles like personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, limited government, respect for authority, and individual liberty.
Benes writes that the Republican Party “has done an incredible marketing job convincing people in rural areas that it values these ideal and that it’s the only party doing so.” You don’t want the government sticking its nose into your business until there’s a tornado, a flood, or a pandemic—and for many people not even then. Benes has suffered a number of medical calamities, and the benefits he received from Obamacare “made me reconsider other ways the government helped my life.”
So what’s the answer? There is no one answer. Because a single party controls the system, many actions that would make the state less hidebound are impossible: end gerrymandering, reform campaign finance laws, open primaries, ranked voting, improve secondary and higher education.
At the same time, Benes believes change is possible. With the right messaging, he says, “there’s an opportunity for Democrats to win some rural voters with health care.” And rather attack the immigrants, “redirect their ire at the corporations who, through consolidation and union busting, drove wages down so far that the only people who will take their jobs any more are the people they recruit from other countries eager for a new life.”
Rural Rebellion is an insightful and useful book. Benes is a splendid writer who has added prodigious research to his personal experiences to help readers understand how Nebraska (and by extension other red states) became a Republican stronghold.
Benes has written for many media outlets including The American Prospect, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, The Nation, New York, Rolling Stone, Slate, Vice, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s the author of Sex Weird-o-Pedia and The Sex Effect, which was described as “Freakonomics without pants.” He’s a lively writer, a diligent researcher, and is not afraid to include himself in the story when it helps the reader understand how he’s come to believe what he believes.
He spent his first 19 years in Brainard (pop. 420), a village in eastern Nebraska, and attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, which is about 40 miles to the southwest. He had a brief stint in Detroit, moved to New York City where he worked for Esquire magazine. He has stayed in New York, and his book traces how his political views “evolved as I’ve shifted from being a right-wing small-town Nebraskan to a card-carrying member of the East Coast ‘fake news’ media.” The book is about “the dissonance of moving from one of the most rural and conservative regions of America to one of its most liberal and urban centers as the two grow further apart at a critical moment in our country’s history.”
Start with abortion. “In Brainard,” says Benes, “we will support anything Republicans do as long as Republicans say that abortion is evil.” The right to life trumps all other issues: income inequality, basic health care, environmental degradation, immigration, and more. What’s more, the issue is non-negotiable. If you believe that a woman’s egg becomes a human being the moment a male sperm enters it the subject is closed and any talk of a woman’s right to control her body, or back-street abortions, or human misery is irrelevant.
So in Nebraska, Republicans support life while Democrats are baby killers. “Across Nebraska, billboards featuring Jesus and babies decorate cornfields that grow so tall that you can’t see past the country road intersection.” Nebraska school children look for ideas for pro-life poster they draw for school or their Catholic church. “They probably won’t realize that they’re advertising someone else’s politics. When you’re isolated in a depopulated area that consists almost entirely of people who look like you and share your beliefs, you don’t really question these things,” which is a theme that runs through the entire book.
As a result, state and local Nebraska political candidates must avoid any discussion of abortion, any hint that a woman has the right to decide whether to carry a fetus to term or not. As one state senator told Benes, “If you’re talking about abortion, you’re losing.” And be careful about the way you talk about immigration while you’re at it.
Nebraska actually has a record of accepting record number of refugees. Nevertheless, Benes writes that “city councils push ordinances aimed at making life unlivable for illegals despite their economic dependence on migrant labor. State legislators try to take away government funds for immigrants’ prenatal care even though these lawmakers ostensibly oppose abortion.”
Growing up in Brainard, Benes says he drank the Kool-Aid (invented in Nebraska): he wanted fewer illegal immigrants in the country; he wanted them deported; he wanted stricter border patrol. “Our safety depended on it. We law-abiding citizens didn’t deserve to be exposed to those who don’t respect the law.” With immigration, however, there may be room for negotiation.
He interviewed the mayor of Schuyler, a town that changed considerably when Cargill expended its beef plant and used migrant laborers to fill low-paying jobs, jobs Cornhuskers did not want to take at the wages offered. “Now Schuyler has the demographics benefitting an international municipality.” Immigrant businesses like The African Store, Chichihualo Supermarket, Novedades La Sorpresa clothing store, and Paleteria Oasis ice-cream stand help keep the town alive. “I’ve been to a lot of withering towns in Nebraska that would kill to have as many operating businesses as Schuyler has.”
Of course, there have been growing pains. A local man Benes talks with is unhappy that the golf club is the only place in town these days that serves a decent meal. While “an international ag corporation decided to expand its beef operations, now there is nowhere in town to regularly get a good steak because of it.” Blame the immigrants.
Then there’s health care. When you are used to “doing whatever you damn-well please on your own property, forcing people to participate in a massive health-care marketplace feels restrictive of personal liberty.” People in Brainard generally embrace principles like personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, limited government, respect for authority, and individual liberty.
Benes writes that the Republican Party “has done an incredible marketing job convincing people in rural areas that it values these ideal and that it’s the only party doing so.” You don’t want the government sticking its nose into your business until there’s a tornado, a flood, or a pandemic—and for many people not even then. Benes has suffered a number of medical calamities, and the benefits he received from Obamacare “made me reconsider other ways the government helped my life.”
So what’s the answer? There is no one answer. Because a single party controls the system, many actions that would make the state less hidebound are impossible: end gerrymandering, reform campaign finance laws, open primaries, ranked voting, improve secondary and higher education.
At the same time, Benes believes change is possible. With the right messaging, he says, “there’s an opportunity for Democrats to win some rural voters with health care.” And rather attack the immigrants, “redirect their ire at the corporations who, through consolidation and union busting, drove wages down so far that the only people who will take their jobs any more are the people they recruit from other countries eager for a new life.”
Rural Rebellion is an insightful and useful book. Benes is a splendid writer who has added prodigious research to his personal experiences to help readers understand how Nebraska (and by extension other red states) became a Republican stronghold.
August 31, 2022
Difficult read for me, in part because no audio version available (so restricted to reading only during quiet times like when I got the late night shift volunteering at the severe-weather shelter) and in part because it’s full of facts and information and I always felt if I didn’t go slowly I’d “miss” things.
I know myself well enough to know I won’t be able to retain all the great information in this book. However, I did find it a great read - full of information but written from someone whose background and values I could relate to (unlike JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which while it was interesting I couldn’t relate to the author AT ALL).
Really liked this book, and torn between 4 and 5 stars. Given I’ve already recommended it to many, I’ll go with five.
Edited to add: I was born and raised in Nebraska. Went to college in Iowa (Drake University - Des Moines), then moved to Chicago until 2014 when I moved to Washington state.
I know myself well enough to know I won’t be able to retain all the great information in this book. However, I did find it a great read - full of information but written from someone whose background and values I could relate to (unlike JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which while it was interesting I couldn’t relate to the author AT ALL).
Really liked this book, and torn between 4 and 5 stars. Given I’ve already recommended it to many, I’ll go with five.
Edited to add: I was born and raised in Nebraska. Went to college in Iowa (Drake University - Des Moines), then moved to Chicago until 2014 when I moved to Washington state.
April 7, 2022
As a transplanted New Englander who's now lived in Lincoln, NE since 2000, I've witnessed/lived much of the recent political history that Ross Benes details in this very interesting and well researched book. I appreciated learning about the details of some of the more distant history that I had only a minimal, or no, knowledge of. That helped a lot to bring perspective to his narrative.
I have considerable experience traveling across the state of Nebraska and have met and known folks in almost every corner. When I arrived, the welcome was hearty and sincere. Over the years I've noticed a slow diminishing of the notion of "Nebraska nice" and, in the last couple of years. that has only increased. People right now are angry, frustrated, and far less caring of their fellows. It's a generalization, of course, but the climate has definitely changed in the age of narcissistic excess and pandemic pandemonium. Maybe someday the "good life" niceness will renew itself; right now, not so much...
I take issue with Benes in one important regard. The provincialism, insularity, xenophobia, and more that he ascribes to Brainard and many other small Nebraska and heartland towns is not unique to fly-over country. I was born into and raised in an immigrant, working-class community in a down-on-its-heels New England mill town in the 50s and 60s. Talk about provincial, insular and xenophobic! The irony there, of course, was that our neighbors were nearly all, like us, of immigrant descent, second or third generation. Everyone felt/feared that the other guy was reaping benefits at their expense. Completely unfounded but no less visceral. I often shared my youthful reality as a first-generation working class university student with my University of Nebraska students to underscore how similar many of our backgrounds and upbringings were. I'm somewhat surprised that Benes didn't seem to clue in to the provincialism and insularity of many neighborhoods in the NYC boroughs. Perhaps the gentrification that he's surrounded by is partly responsible.
My wife, a now retired family and social services professional who spent much of her career training social service workers and public school personnel in small Nebraska towns including Schuyler, also read RURAL REVOLUTION. She takes specific issue with the 'rose-colored glasses' outlook that Benes has relative to Brainard and towns like it. The notion that everyone there reaches out and supports everyone else extends only so far. People struggling on the margins who live there but didn't necessarily grow up there, who might not be connected with the right church, or any church, or who might not be the "right" ethnicity, often experience a very different Brainard than Benes did.
After a road trip through the Sandhills I once raved about its beauty to a friend, a lifelong Nebraskan, who was born on a cattle ranch in Cherry County, and lived the first part of her life there. Her simple reply, "Yeah, just as long as you don't have to live there."
Benes' detailing of how he came to more liberal political views made sense. That comes from educating oneself, from travel, from engagement with difference and from embracing change. Great that he's 'got it' by this point in his life. I'd love to be around to see how he'd frame this story once he's in his 60s or 70s, career mostly behind him, life experience fulfilled. THAT will be a really interesting book.
Final caveat: I read this on a Kindle. The copy editing was sloppy throughout - numerous word inversions, grammatical errors, word duplications (e.g., two "todays" in one sentence!) and some misspellings, left me wondering if I was reading a galley proof or some other pre-publication version. More attention needed to be paid in that department. Had it not been for that editorial sloppiness, I'd likely have given the book four stars.
I have considerable experience traveling across the state of Nebraska and have met and known folks in almost every corner. When I arrived, the welcome was hearty and sincere. Over the years I've noticed a slow diminishing of the notion of "Nebraska nice" and, in the last couple of years. that has only increased. People right now are angry, frustrated, and far less caring of their fellows. It's a generalization, of course, but the climate has definitely changed in the age of narcissistic excess and pandemic pandemonium. Maybe someday the "good life" niceness will renew itself; right now, not so much...
I take issue with Benes in one important regard. The provincialism, insularity, xenophobia, and more that he ascribes to Brainard and many other small Nebraska and heartland towns is not unique to fly-over country. I was born into and raised in an immigrant, working-class community in a down-on-its-heels New England mill town in the 50s and 60s. Talk about provincial, insular and xenophobic! The irony there, of course, was that our neighbors were nearly all, like us, of immigrant descent, second or third generation. Everyone felt/feared that the other guy was reaping benefits at their expense. Completely unfounded but no less visceral. I often shared my youthful reality as a first-generation working class university student with my University of Nebraska students to underscore how similar many of our backgrounds and upbringings were. I'm somewhat surprised that Benes didn't seem to clue in to the provincialism and insularity of many neighborhoods in the NYC boroughs. Perhaps the gentrification that he's surrounded by is partly responsible.
My wife, a now retired family and social services professional who spent much of her career training social service workers and public school personnel in small Nebraska towns including Schuyler, also read RURAL REVOLUTION. She takes specific issue with the 'rose-colored glasses' outlook that Benes has relative to Brainard and towns like it. The notion that everyone there reaches out and supports everyone else extends only so far. People struggling on the margins who live there but didn't necessarily grow up there, who might not be connected with the right church, or any church, or who might not be the "right" ethnicity, often experience a very different Brainard than Benes did.
After a road trip through the Sandhills I once raved about its beauty to a friend, a lifelong Nebraskan, who was born on a cattle ranch in Cherry County, and lived the first part of her life there. Her simple reply, "Yeah, just as long as you don't have to live there."
Benes' detailing of how he came to more liberal political views made sense. That comes from educating oneself, from travel, from engagement with difference and from embracing change. Great that he's 'got it' by this point in his life. I'd love to be around to see how he'd frame this story once he's in his 60s or 70s, career mostly behind him, life experience fulfilled. THAT will be a really interesting book.
Final caveat: I read this on a Kindle. The copy editing was sloppy throughout - numerous word inversions, grammatical errors, word duplications (e.g., two "todays" in one sentence!) and some misspellings, left me wondering if I was reading a galley proof or some other pre-publication version. More attention needed to be paid in that department. Had it not been for that editorial sloppiness, I'd likely have given the book four stars.
January 30, 2021
One of the most interesting things that has come about the last half decade or so is how divided we have become politically.
Nebraska has a unique political past and the shifts are mirrored with many Midwest states in the rise of Trump. In his usual humor, Benes delves into issues that have separated once united communities. I’ve enjoyed many political books but this one is among the best in terms of readability.
Anyone interested in politics and understanding the trend of divisiveness should pick this one up. Highly recommended.
Nebraska has a unique political past and the shifts are mirrored with many Midwest states in the rise of Trump. In his usual humor, Benes delves into issues that have separated once united communities. I’ve enjoyed many political books but this one is among the best in terms of readability.
Anyone interested in politics and understanding the trend of divisiveness should pick this one up. Highly recommended.
January 11, 2024
Benes grew up in Brainard Nebraska, attended college at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and is now a free lancer writer in Brooklyn. Over that time he moved from ultra conservative to moderate/liberal. This book covers politics, immigration, and health care. He writes well and does a very good job of capturing the important details and interesting stories of how Nebraska has evolved in these three areas. His super power is his ability to convey both sides of an issue with an open minded graciousness.
July 17, 2022
This book was a very enjoyable. It was very insightful about political opinions in the Midwest; particularly rural Nebraska, compared to those in more populated cities on either coast. Ross does a great job of presenting both sides of contentious political issues without judgment and a dose of Midwest humor. My husband read the book as well and enjoyed it immensely.
April 6, 2025
3 1/2 stars, but closer to 4 stars than 3 since there’s no half options
August 3, 2022
Good read for both Midwesterners and city folk
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